What Does a College Pay for Its Football Coach? It Depends on How Many It’s Paying

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CreditIllustration by The New York Times

By MARC TRACY

SEPTEMBER 8, 2017

What if a college football team paid not only its own head coach but another one? And another one?

It happens all the time — practically every time a team fires a coach. Thanks to ever-faster turnover, with coaches routinely fired after only a few disappointing seasons, many colleges are paying millions of dollars in “dead money” to former coaches even as they shell out even more for new ones. At least two major programs, in fact, are at this very moment paying for three head coaches.

The reason, of course, is the unceasing pressure to win. As dollars flooded college sports over the past two decades, and coaches began to earn more and more, expectations were ratcheted up. In response, coaches began to demand protection from underperformance in the form of longer contracts, and athletic departments began including buyout provisions that forced coaches — or their new teams — to hand over multimillion-dollar payments if a coach was lured to greener pastures.

The sums involved can be enormous. Just ask Notre Dame and Kansas, which at one point were both paying Charlie Weis as head coach — long after both had sent him packing. The Irish and the Jayhawks had fired Weis without cause (losing games, under labor law, is not “cause”), and owed him buyouts — nearly $20 million over several years in Notre Dame’s case, according to USA Today, even as he went on to coach other teams.

“It was just something that wasn’t put in,” Bob LaMonte, Weis’s agent, said of language that would have mitigated Weis’s Notre Dame buyout with income he earned in a new coaching job. “Now, since this has occurred, it’s become more solid that this is included.”

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So while college football’s highest salary, depending on how one defines it, may be the roughly $7 million per year that Michigan pays Jim Harbaugh, some programs are spending more than the Wolverines for their head coaching position.

The analyses below rely on documents made available to The New York Times via public-records laws, and they do not include contractually mandated perks like cars, club memberships or even relocation reimbursements. Head coaching situations at private colleges, which are not required to disclose contracts, were not considered, even though the University of Miami, for example, might still be paying a buyout to Al Golden, fired during the 2015 season, to go along with Mark Richt’s $4 million salary.

Texas

Total: $12.45 million

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Texas is in effect paying, or at least helping to pay, three head coaches this season. There is, of course, its own first-year head coach, Tom Herman, whom it hired away from Houston late last year. Herman’s first-year salary of $5.25 million catapulted him into the top tier of college coaches in only his third season in charge of a program.

Then there is Texas’ previous coach, Charlie Strong. The university fired Strong in November, three years into a five-year contract, requiring Texas to pay him about $5.2 million for each of the remaining two seasons. Strong’s contract obligated him to try to mitigate his buyout with a new job, which he did, getting hired as the coach at the University of South Florida. But South Florida wisely structured Strong’s contract to take advantage of Texas’ obligation, paying him just $1 million in each of his first two years before kicking in a large raise once Strong leaves the Texas payroll. His South Florida compensation knocked $500,000 off Texas’ annual contribution, meaning the Longhorns will pay him about $4.7 million this year (and also next year).

Finally, Texas is also effectively subsidizing the salary of Houston’s new coach, Major Applewhite. As a condition of Herman’s contract with Houston, he owed the Cougars $2.5 million for breaking his deal to take the new job. But Texas assumed that obligation and, according to the Houston athletic director’s reported remarks, declined Houston’s offer to make up that deficit by scheduling home-and-home series in basketball and football. The lump sum Texas will pay instead should take care of nearly two years of Applewhite’s $1.5 million salary.

Oregon

Total: $8.5 million

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Having fired Mark Helfrich with three years left on his contract — less than two years after giving him an extension — Oregon, too, will be paying or subsidizing three head coaches this season. There is Helfrich’s replacement, Willie Taggart, whose starting salary is $2.9 million. Taggart’s departure from South Florida triggered a $1.6 million buyout provision, which Oregon will pay. (You read that right: Two Power 5 teams are paying South Florida more than $3.6 million combined, more than three times what they are paying the man who actually holds the position.) And then there is Helfrich, who, starting from his firing last year to the end of next season, was owed about $4 million in buyout money. Like Charlie Strong’s, Helfrich’s contract included mitigation language that would have cut his buyout income had he taken a new coaching position. But the language cited as an example of a mitigating job a “coaching or athletic administrative position,” whereas Helfrich’s new job as a college football analyst with Fox Sports should keep his buyout intact.

Florida

Total: $6.4 million

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That amount, by itself, might not make one of the top Southeastern Conference football programs blush too much. If Urban Meyer had never left Gainesville and instead were entering his 13th season leading the Gators, he would probably be getting paid more. And in the massive business that is college sports, a $4.3 million salaryfor the third-year coach Jim McElwain — who had proven success as an SEC offensive coordinator and a Football Bowl Subdivision head coach — might not raise eyebrows. But for each of the past two seasons, and again for this one, Florida has also owed the former coach Will Muschamp $2.1 million. Muschamp’s contract did not require him to mitigate after he was fired in 2014, so he collected what he was owed from Florida even as he served as Auburn’s defensive coordinator and as South Carolina’s head coach. In other words, Florida is paying, in addition to its own head coach, the head coach of a division rival. At least the Gators won last year’s meeting.

Connecticut

Total: $4.4 million

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When the Huskies hired Randy Edsall last winter after three losing seasons under Bob Diaco, they got their once and future head coach for a reasonable $1 million salary. Last season, that price would not have put UConn in the top half of its league, the American Athletic Conference. But firing Diaco triggered a $3.4 million buyout. UConn can congratulate itself on technically letting Diaco go in 2017, even though the move was announced in December: An effective end date in 2016 would have cost the Huskies $5 million. But UConn’s tab would have been significantly smaller still — only $800,000 — if it had not given Diaco a richer buyout as part of a two-year extension he negotiated only seven months before he was fired.

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Alabama

Total: $11.1 million

Alabama pays only one head coach. Even after Nick Saban signed a contract extension in May that runs through the 2024 season, his annual paycheck (which includes a salary, a “talent fee” and a “contract year completion benefit”) of a little more than $7 million is roughly equal to Harbaugh’s. But the extension also granted Saban a $4 million signing bonus (he is due something similar after the 2021 season as well). In Saban’s decade leading the Crimson Tide, though, they followed years of mediocrity by going 120-19, with four national titles. In that sense, one could make a good case that Alabama is getting its money’s worth.

Research was contributed by Robert Lattinville, an agent at Spencer Fane who collaborates with USA Today on its database of coaching salaries.